The violent consequences of being branded ‘hateful’

The Southern Poverty Law Center is America’s premier ‘hate watch’ organisation. It is treated by many as an impartial arbiter of extremism. It designates certain organisations as ‘hate groups’ and produces a ‘hate map’ of the US. But the concept of hate – as with hate speech and hate crime – is entirely subjective and elastic. It can be applied to groups that genuinely promote hate and violence, or simply to groups promoting a message that is at odds with progressive orthodoxy. In 2012, Jessica Prol Smith worked for the Family Research Council (FRC), a Christian organisation. She discovered firsthand the potentially violent consequences of being labelled as hateful – and being lumped in with racists and fascists.

Prol Smith currently works for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another Christian organisation promoting religious liberty. spiked caught up with Prol Smith and her colleague, Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s vice president of US advocacy, to find out more.

spiked: Can you describe the attack on your offices in 2012?

Jessica Prol Smith: It was 15 August, 2012 – so, seven years ago. It ended up being one of the worst days of my life. I was working as an editor for the Family Research Council. I was just about to go to lunch when we were put on lockdown. A man with a gun entered my office with a plan to kill as many of us as possible. He had brought in a dozen Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack and rounds of ammunition. He later testified that he wanted ‘to smear the chicken sandwiches in victims faces as a statement’.

My co-worker, Leo, managed to interrupt his attempt to shoot the place up. He really saved the day. It was later that we learned from the gunman’s testimony to law enforcement that he had got the idea to target our office by looking at the SPLC’s hate map. The map lumps together mainstream conservative organisations right next to the KKK and other racists. It was appalling and offensive to see the SPLC compare peaceful, Christian organisations like the ones I’ve worked for to the KKK.

spiked: Are the Family Research Council or Alliance Defending Freedom hateful organisations by any stretch?

Prol Smith: The FRC focuses on protecting freedoms of religion, protecting the rights of the unborn and protecting the value of the family. The ADF is one of the nation’s most respected and successful Supreme Court advocates. We’ve won nine cases at the Supreme Court since 2011, and we work so that all Americans can peacefully live out their faith. But the SPLC has decided that they disagree with both organisations on some policy stances and so it slapped a ‘hate’ label on them. It has slandered them, simply because it disagrees with them.

spiked: What motivates the SPLC?

Jeremy Tedesco: The SPLC’s main motive is money. Historically the term ‘hate group’ was well understood. It meant groups that engaged in or incited violent actions against certain people. But the SPLC has expanded the definition of ‘hate’ to now include people and groups who merely disagree with the SPLC’s far-left agenda.

Right now, the SPLC has $500,000,000 unused donor dollars sitting in domestic and off-shore accounts. Even sympathetic voices, like Nathan J Robinson, editor in chief of Current Affairs, has described the SPLC’s hate map as an ‘outright fraud’ and a ‘willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC’. In order to raise more money, they expand the kind of groups that fit into that category of ‘hate group’ to meet their and their donors’ political goals.

spiked: Why are normal political disagreements so often described as hateful?

Tedesco: The left uses that word as a hammer to push people out of society, out of public life. The idea of hate speech is incredibly relevant here. The problem is that it is an inherently vague term, but it’s always used by those in power or those who wield it, to silence or censor or defund people they disagree with.

In the United States, there is no legal concept of hate speech, precisely because it can be used subjectively to shut down debate and attack people on the other side of an issue. My concern is the rise of its use, culturally and politically, it could bleed over into making laws. We don’t want this concept gaining any ground in the United States. The left likes it because it’s a malleable club they can use to hit anybody. They attach the hate label to virtually anyone who takes a position that is outside the lock-step orthodoxy of the progressives.

Prol Smith: Unfortunately, the hate labelling is a fundraising scheme that the SPLC has used to its advantage. It has issued a press statement and has started fundraising in response to me telling my story in a USA Today op-ed. The SPLC statement went out of its way to explicitly not state any sympathy for me and my colleagues. It paraphrased the original distortion of our organisation’s aims and reiterated the claim that we are a hate group.

It has always been easier to smear people than wrestle with their ideas. And it’s absolutely demeaning to public debate.

spiked: How has the SPLC’s hate label affected ADF’s reputation?

Tedesco: I don’t think it’s affected our ability to be taken seriously. Part of the reason for that is the SPLC’s own credibility is under serious question right now – and it has been for decades. Earlier this year, in March, 25 or so employees signed a letter saying that there was a systemic culture of racism and sexism inside the SPLC. The co-founder and president left shortly thereafter. It really put the focus on the fact that this is an organisation that says it is the arbiter of these issues, but it has all those problems, apparently inside its own house. This has led to a lot of scrutiny, and I think their reputation has taken an enormous hit.

But the hate label does have an impact on us. For instance, we have been kicked out of Amazon’s Smile programme, which gives all of Amazon’s customers the opportunity to donate a fraction of their purchase price to their favourite charity. Amazon relies blindly on SPLC’s hate-group list as one of the gatekeepers to the programme. We’ve also been denied non-profit pricing from Microsoft. Our attorneys have gone to speak on college campuses and have had to hire security guards to keep them safe because students are relying on the SPLC’s lies and misinformation about us.

The flipside of all this is that it has made us look inside and ask: is it worth doing what we do? Is the hate label something that makes us less vocal about our beliefs? Exactly the opposite is true. It has confirmed our resolve to do the work we do and to know that we are doing good work.

Prol Smith: We have also seen some mainstream media sources just copy and paste the SPLC’s data, acting as if it’s an impartial arbiter. But I do think that’s beginning to change. Some mainstream sources like the New York Times, NPR and Politico have been shining a light on them in the past few years.

Unfortunately, there are still others who are prepared to carry on using the same kind of irresponsible rhetoric and who try to shut others down. I don’t expect that everyone will agree with my beliefs or point of view, but I am working and hoping for a country where we can have real conversations without being slandered.

JPM Culligan

7th September 2019 at 3:22 pm

Equating words with violence is not the same as saying that words can invite violence…

Grow up, snowflake!

Jim Lawrie

7th September 2019 at 6:02 pm

No Danny. Branding someone hateful is to say they cannot be reasoned with, their views are totally irrational, they not listen and are intent on the destruction of that which they hate. That there is only one way of dealing with their sort.

Ms Prol Smith and Mr Tedesco present a reasoned critique of the SPLC, without invective or exhortation.

Bronk’s Funeral

6th September 2019 at 9:50 am

Would there be all this handwringing if the ADF were a Muslim organisation declaring homosexuals and women to be undeserving of basic rights, hmmmmm?

The only religious organisation truly aiming at freedom is Satanic Temple. AMSG, lads.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:55 am

“Would there be all this handwringing if the ADF were a Muslim organisation declaring homosexuals and women to be undeserving of basic rights, hmmmmm?”

It wasn’t the ADF it was the Family Research Center.

But no of course not.

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 9:42 am

Are we to conclude that some organisations deserve to be on these lists, that they are fair game? Just nor hers. Go shoot someone else? That such proscriptions are fine?

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:55 am

Nobody said they were fair game for anything.

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 11:36 am

Dictionary time Danny. Deduction. Implication.

Dominic Straiton

6th September 2019 at 9:40 am

With Nazis being in such short supply the left has to invent an army of them forgetting an actual army of Nazis was defeated by men who had the normal views of ordinary people who today would be viewed as Nazis. The SPLC is a money making scam.

Jerry Owen

6th September 2019 at 8:54 am

Yes, the left find it easier to smear rather than engage in debate, but it is more of a case that they are politically illiterate and their anti human nature ( aka XR etc ) ideas do not resonate with rational people.

steve moxon

6th September 2019 at 7:31 am

All the hate is from the Left.
Leftism is status-seeking hidden behind the pretense that it isn’t: the pretense that Leftists are not status-seeking but that non-Leftists are. What this actually amounts to is the Left ‘projecting’ their own ‘will to power’ on to everyone else. Marxist and other theory dreamed up to push this fraud doesn’t wash in any test against reality, so Leftists are cognitively dissonant, and in continued ‘projection’ on to others blame us all for this as well, and come up with even greater nonsense — ‘identity politics’. The whole shebang ratchets up into Leftist hate against everyone else. It’s a malignant self-serving malicious political religion, and it’s implosion and death can’t come too soon.

brent mckeon

6th September 2019 at 7:23 am

Danny change ‘might’ to ‘will’ and you could have a bit of truth in your hateful comment.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:34 am

Oh I see so we should stay quiet then and not call out unpleasant views because it WILL inspire murder.

So you are all for shutting down free speech and silencing debate.

I see then.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 2:18 am

I’ve read up just now on The Family Research Council and they look like another cranky Christian group with pretty unpleasant views on homosexuality.

But yeah we should not call out their bollocks because it might inspire murder.

Mmmm ok.

Scott Buswell

6th September 2019 at 6:59 am

There’s a difference between debating/calling out and a well-funded, self appointed NGOs/lobby groups labelling opposing views/groups as hateful.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:40 am

Right so if I said everyone who voted Leave is a racist scum far right bigoted piece of shit that’s just an “opposing view” and not hateful then?

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 10:47 am

The whole point of identifying them organisationally and geographically is to intimidate, not debate. SPLC take it upon themselves to be judge, jury and prosecution, no defence, scant evidence, and the stripping of all rights, like freedom of belief and expression, and privacy. The template for twitter.

Jim Lawrie

7th September 2019 at 7:00 pm

DANNY REES
6th September 2019 at 9:40 am

Right so if I said everyone who voted Leave is a racist scum far right bigoted piece of shit that’s just an “opposing view” and not hateful then?

The above, Danny, is a general statement, not directed at a specific organisation and its people. Plus, it being you, is unlikely to be taken seriously. Unless there is someone, somewhere, as glib as are you. Surely not?

gershwin gentile

6th September 2019 at 9:47 am

“But yeah we should not call out their bollocks because it might inspire murder” Turning up with a gat isn’t calling out moron.

“Right so if I said everyone who voted Leave is a racist scum far right bigoted piece of shit that’s just an “opposing view” and not hateful then?” Not as hateful as turning up with a gat, threatening to shoot people. Moron.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:49 am

Oh dear that’s not the point at all.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 9:51 am

You are completely unable to read and absorb what someone said.

This person said there is a difference in calling people out and branding opposing views hateful and I asked if calling Leavers racist is not hateful.

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 9:54 am

Finger pointing, labelling, listing and grading? “Call” out is a Martial arts term for challenging someone to fight. You are not interested in discussion, just shrieking and virtue signalling.

The BBC received >1200 complaints for featuring two poofters tying the knot on Songs of Praise. Ought they to print names and addresses so jessie boys like you can come calling? Or the names and addresses of the poofs? Or yours – so people can go round and laugh at you?

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 10:03 am

LOL if ever there was a comment designed to provoke an angry response there it is.

I could not give a stuff about people with nothing better to do complaining over something they saw on a boring religious programme.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 10:09 am

By the way I do not advocate publishing addresses of people who’s views I find unpleasant.

My interpretation of “calling out” is saying that something is wrong or offensive. It’s not challenging someone to a fight.

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 11:39 am

Then tell us Danny, not that their views on homosexuals are wrong, but what is wrong with their views on homosexuals, since it was you who brought the subject up.

Jim Lawrie

6th September 2019 at 1:26 pm

The article is not about you Danny, or what you advocate. It is about the SPLC. What they do, knowing the proven and therefore likely consequences. The real life publishing of names and addresses. With a gun in your face in the hands of someone in violent disagreement, advocating your views is not an option.

Danny Rees

6th September 2019 at 7:26 pm

You mention SPLC publishing names and addresses which is not mentioned by the person interviewed in this piece.
I have Googled information on this and opponents of the SPLC claim they have published addresses of people which of course the SPLC deny. I cannot prove or disprove these allegations to be false but IF true then they should not have done this and should be taken to task for it.

Nobody should post addresses of people who’s views they dislike and find offensive.

Their views on homosexuals are discriminatory towards gay people. They have the freedom to express their views and others have the freedom to say that their views are offensive and wrong and bollocks.

Gerard Barry

6th September 2019 at 10:17 am

The problem is not “calling them out” (a phrase beloved of so many “liberals” nowadays – naming and shaming as it were, how puritanical!), the problem is a group like the SPLC taking it upon itself to accuse certain groups as being “hateful” and a gullible public taking this as a given fact.